Dreams, Communism & Jose Mourinho

What have Jose Mourinho, communist dictatorships and Stubbington all got in common? Give up? Well, they were all part of a bizarre tapestry woven together in the surreal unconscious landscapes of my dreams a few nights ago. Here are the sordid details of how the events panned out…

I had returned home to visit my mum and dad in Stubbington, the village where I had grown up. In an uncharacteristic moment of helpfulness I offered to take their Jack Russell for a walk at the local park, the same park where I had spent many a carefree day as a young man. For those of you who don’t know Stubbington, it is a quaint(ish) little village where not a lot out of the ordinary ever happens, and the park itself is simply four football pitches divided up by an unremarkable collection of swings, climbing frames and a few trees and mounds. This is where I was found myself in the dream – walking – as I had done a thousand times before, around the pitches adjacent to the community centre.

The predictable mundaneness of the scene was destroyed as I noticed a collection of camouflage coloured jeeps arrive in a convoy and pull up on the pitch furthest away from me. On the pitch opposite them, green khaki tents had been erected in a frenzy of activity, and heavily armed men were carrying what looked like anti-aircraft guns and missiles into the tents.

I panicked; my head swarmed; none of it made sense. What the hell was going on? Then I saw the first clue. The calling card of the former USSR: small red badges with the golden hammer and sickle adorned the sleeves of the troops and the hoods of the jeeps: communists. But what in the name of all things holy had brought them to Stubbington?

No sooner had this question popped into my head, than I’d received an answer that left me quaking like a puppy in a Chinese abattoir. Gigantic, bed sheet sized flags emblazoned with the face of Jose Mourinho on them were raised above the growing encampments, his arrogant face rippling horrifically in the Solent wind. His eyes looked down upon Stubbington and its inhabitants like a modern day big brother performing an egotistical taunt. The next thing I knew, the quiet of the park was shattered, his voice bellowing out of a set of mega-watt loud-speakers.

‘People of Stubbington, I am Mourinho!’ His name reverberated around the park like a baseball bat to the ear. ‘You will join me, or you will die. If you doubt me then see this.’ The freakish hiss of missile flight could be heard for a split second before half the community centre was raining down in ash and fire all over the village. People ran for their homes screaming, and then the voice bellowed out again ‘There will be no escape; there will be no hiding. Your homes will not protect you from the power of Mourinho!’

I picked up the dog and ran as fast as I could back to my parents’ house. I searched every room like a madman chasing sanity. Nobody was home. Shit. Then a thud at the door. Then another. Then another.

‘We are the communist army of Mourinho. Open the door in the name of the Special One.’

I had to do something, but what? A plethora of ideas flashed into my mind’s eye like a restless candle’s flicker. Then I had it. I knew what I had to do. I ran into my parents’ bathroom and sitting there in the basket in the corner (just like it always does in real life) was a dog-eared copy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel’s ‘The Communist Manifesto’. I grabbed it, sat myself on the toilet in an act of faux-defecation and waited, like a defendant for a jury, to discover what my fate would be.

The door was kicked in and the goons began to search the house. I didn’t want to suggest that I was hiding and so I shouted to them to alert them to my whereabouts. As they walked into the bathroom, they were greeted by the sight of what looked a man heeding the call of nature whilst reading the text which formed the foundations upon which communism was built. They looked me up and down and then fixed their stares on the manifesto. A surly looking, battle-hardened sergeant nodded at the book and then nodded at me.

‘Let’s go.’ He said ‘We have only allies here. Mourinho will be pleased.’ And they turned around and left. I could never in a million years thank Marx and Engels enough for saving my life, for sending the minions of Mourinho’s communist army packing, for preventing a fate worse than John Terry for my family and I.

And that was when I woke up.

If anyone would like to send me a psychoanalysis then please feel free to do so. In the meantime, I would make sure that you don’t say anything bad about Chelsea football club, and just be vigilant around Stubbington village…